Chandigarh: The Senior Post Master at the General Post Office in Sector 17 has been directed by the UT Consumer Forum to compensate a HUF account holder whose account was extended without his permission for a period of five years, but who was denied interest on the amount deposited in the account.

The complainant, Ram Niwas Singal, a resident of Sector 15, had a PPF (Public Provident Fund) account as Karta (custodian) of HUF (Hindu Undivided Family), which was transferred from Hisar to Chandigarh in December 1999. It matured in April 2005 and the bank extended the account of Singal for a further period of 5 years. He was not asked to fill and sign any form pertaining to that, but the subscription of Singal was accepted upto March 2010.

According to Singal, he was informed that he was not entitled to the interest after April 2005, in view of the instructions of Ministry of Finance, by which the HUF account cannot be extended beyond the period of maturity and in case of irregular deposits, no interest will to be paid. As a result, he was not given interest on the amount of Rs 2,50,000 from February 2006 to January 2011.

According to the judgement, the date of opening of the account was wrongly fed into the computer by the postal authority, leading to the confusion and it was adjudged that the post office had not given any valid reasons for non-payment of interest, which is illegal and a deficiency in service on the part of the post office.